Arts & Events

Following two very diverse concerts opening the 2015/16 Berkeley Symphony season, featuring works by two prominent contemporary female composers, Russian-born Sofia Gubaidulina and Finnish-born Kaija Saariaho (who attended and commented from the stage on the performaqnce of her piece 'Laterna Magica'), music director Joana Carneiro has programmed another intersting juxtaposition of works for the Symphony's third (and next-to-last) program of the season, "Majestic," for 8 p. m. next Thursday evening, February 4: two concerti, Beethoven's final piano concerto, No. 5 in E-flat major, the "Emperor,"and Concerto for Orchestra,:the first work by Witold Lutoslawski to be noted in the West. 

'Concerto for Orchestra,' the premiere of which in Warsaw, 1954, marked the culmination of the composer's period of harmonically reworking folkloric and popular melodies into "Neo-Baroque" compositions rather than Post-Romantic quoting of folk music, points forward from the time Lutoslawski concentrated on popular forms of music to evade charges of formalism that had been leveled at his First Symphony in the late 40s, to his increasingly experimental work that began in 1958 with his Musique Funèbre,commemorating the 10th anniversary of Bartók's death, and developing through the 1960s with Lutoslawski's own version of the 12-tone system and his "controlled aleatory" pieces in answer to John Cage's chance compositions.  

Piano soloist for the Beethoven concerto, Conrad Tao, is also a composer, former violinist and was named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts in 2011. 

The Symphony is offering a 20% discount on each ticket order with the addition of the code: MAJESTIC16. 

8 p. m.-10 p. m., Thursday, February 4. Zellerbach Hall, UC campus (near Telegraph Avenue and Bancroft Way). $15-$74. berkeleysymphony.org or 841-2800 x 1..